Posts By: Michael Ruhlman

Little, Brown, my esteemed publisher, has set up a page for pre-ordering my new book, Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World’s Most Versatile Ingredient. As a bonus for pre-ordering, they’re offering a free signed flowchart, which is a visual display of the entire book on a four-and-a-half-foot piece of paper (the cover gives you something of an idea of the chart, though only an idea). Donna wrote out the original flowchart by hand, five feet of parchment paper, which served as the book proposal. We’re all excited about this new book, which is officially published first thing in April.

I’m continuing the citrus binge as it’s a remedy for the winter blasts we’ve been getting. My favorite vodka mixer had long been grapefruit juice—because I’m a fan of bitter. Bitter is good. But then those tangerines floated into the house and I have to say, The Robertson is one bright cocktail. But back to the basics now, on this busy, busy week, struggling with two manuscripts, a trip to DC to talk Schmaltz, Boston on Sunday, and a manuscript to finish. Something simple and refreshing to end the week. Please, now is the time, fresh grapefruit juice only. That’s what makes the drink. Squeeze it by hand if you don’t have a juicer or a reamer. It’s all about the freshness of the juice. Happy Friday, all. The Greyhound 2 ounces vodka 3 to Read On »

I love pancakes on winter mornings. And I find something terribly satisfying about pancakes with an over-easy egg and bacon—the savory bacon and the sweet pancake and syrup expertly mediated by the versatile egg. I got to thinking about them recently after a commenter on a recent post announcing the Ratio 2.0 release wrote that for five bucks he’d do the math himself. It kind of annoyed me, but I couldn’t figure out why until I thought about pancakes. I always remember that I prefer a 5% brine, so that however much water I use, I can multiply that by .05 to determine the salt quantity. But ratios aren’t simply math, they’re about the proportions of several ingredients. No matter how many times I make pancakes, I always check the ratio. Moreover, they scale to Read On »

It’s winter, which means citrus season approaches, one of the few bright spots in the otherwise endless gray of a Cleveland winter. Donna brought home some oranges with beautiful deep, deep orange-colored flesh. I’d needed them for a duck recipe I was developing. I asked her to get more next time, planning a Screwdriver post and a celebration of citrus. She returned with thick-skinned, stupid old navels, probably from last year. “Sorry,” she said. “That was all they had.” But she did pick up some tangerines because she thought they looked cool. Aha! I’d made a vodka–tangerine juice before and loved it. A helpful check on Twitter found no proper name for this very sunny elixir. It is sunny—sunny in the mouth. It made Donna smile and say, “Mmmmm! It feels healthy!” So, to brighten Read On »

Carri Thurman, baker and chef at Two Sisters Bakery in Homer, Alaska, on a young and growing cooks’ community. Her guest post speaks for itself (great links, too). —M.R. by Carri Thurman This summer I went completely and utterly MAD, and it couldn’t have been more rewarding or delicious. Mad is the Danish word for food. It is also the name of what has become one of the most exciting food conferences happening in the world today. This year’s talks were curated by David Chang and the folks at Lucky Peach magazine with the guidance of MAD founder, the head chef of Noma, Rene Redzepi. It is not so much a technical conference but a gathering of ideas and a convergence of philosophies with presentations that began with impassioned Italian butcher Dario Cecchini gutting a pig and quoting Dante and ended with Alex Atala showing us all that Read On »